Posted by Siamang on: 05.25.2007 /
Today is Towel Day, my friends. What is Towel Day? Towel Day is the day of remembrance for Author Douglas Adams. Adams, best known for writing “The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” was probably the best writer atheism has had in my lifetime. Funnily enough, I didn’t know he was an atheist until after he died and I read about this side of him in the writings of Richard Dawkins. Dawkins and Adams were great friends.
Listening to Adams reading his own work… on the origin of belief in God –well at least the teleological argument for belief in God … I am struck by his warmth, his humor and his keen ability to paint a vivid picture.
Instead of a Friday Funny Video, I present a Friday Witty Audio Clip. You won’t laugh, but you may enjoy it nonetheless.
Think of it as an atheist’s reverse version of the Creation account in Genesis. Rather than God’s story about the creation of man, this is man’s story about the creation of God.
-Siamang
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Comment by: Karen
1 05/25/07 12:47 PM | Comment Link |Thanks, that was great.
I always wondered where that puddle analogy came from. I had no idea it was from Adams.
Not being much of a sci-fi fan, I never read Hitchhiker’s Guide. I guess I’ll have to pick it up.
Comment by: Siamang
2 05/25/07 2:17 PM | Comment Link |Hitchhiker’s guide is only tangentially related to science fiction.
It’s more like a monty python film that happens to be set in space.
Please don’t see the movie.
Actually, the preferred version might be the radio drama or the bbc miniseries.
Comment by: Siamang
3 05/25/07 3:51 PM | Comment Link |Here’s some great excerpts that make my point. Don’t avoid this because it’s science fiction. Check it out, because it’s the perfect nexus of comedy and deep philosophical questions.
The Guide on the Nonexistence of God:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcncPpQ8loA
The Guide on “Alcohol”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Boo9llCz4CM
Comment by: Eliza
4 05/25/07 6:55 PM | Comment Link |I was surprised when I found out (as a result of poking into Dawkins’ background more, as a result of our various discussions online over the past year) that Adams and Dawkins were good friends. Such different areas of expertise, different means of relaying their beliefs to the reading audience - but once you get past the funny fiction v. serious science approaches, the message is really quite similar…
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
5 05/25/07 7:50 PM | Comment Link |Karen, I think you would love HitchHiker’s Guide. There’s a lot of very funny parody of human behavior and philosophy, including religion. I love the line in the intro to the effect “2000 years ago someone was nailed to a tree for saying we should all be nice to each other”.
Like Siamang says it really isn’t sci-fi. And I agree that all other available versions are better than the movie.
Comment by: Julie Marie
6 05/26/07 9:07 AM | Comment Link |well! whoever says blogging away is a frivolous use of my free time obviously has no knowledge of Towel Day.
*thanks for the post Siamang, now I have another book to add to my list : )
Comment by: Karen
7 05/26/07 2:36 PM | Comment Link |Okay, a friend of mine has been bugging me to subscribe to audible.com for months now. They have the unabridged Guide on tape, read by Stephen Fry.
Maybe this would be a good way to try out the service - and if I like it, I can subscribe. I walk and bike a lot, so I listen to stuff on my iPod all the time.
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
8 05/26/07 3:23 PM | Comment Link |Hi Karen, yes, I like the audio version of the book. I got it out the library once.
Btw I was disappointed in the sound quality of audible.com The recording I tried was quite compressed and worse quality than if I put something on my ipod myself. But you may as well do the free trial and see what you think. As you say why not try it out on a good book!
Comment by: Siamang
9 05/26/07 6:06 PM | Comment Link |itunes music store has that same book read by stephen fry.
Comment by: Calladus
10 05/27/07 8:19 AM | Comment Link |Dawkins and Adams were very good friends. Lalla Ward, who is Richard Dawkins’ wife, was introduced to him by Douglas Adams.
Ward is famous for playing a “Time Lord” companion to Dr. Who in the Dr. Who TV series.
Dawkins’ connections to scientific geeky goodness run deep.
Comment by: Mike O
11 05/29/07 2:50 AM | Comment Link |If a Christian preacher preached like this, atheists would have him for lunch.
A few months back, there were several posts regarding “A Case for Christ,” a Creation/Evolution writup by Parkview Christian Church (I think) and even Screwtape letters. Atheists were very critical and made statements to the effect that the authors didn’t go far enough in making their case. Particularly in A Case for Christ, I think Hemant said that the author didn’t go far enough and that there were a million unanswered questions - something like that. That’s not the words he used, but that was the feel of what he was saying. Anyway …
When I listened to this recording, that’s what it felt like to me. Sarting with “Early man, like everything else, is an evolved creature.”
Imagine for a second that Douglas Adams is a Christian, not an atheist. He’s a preacher, not a writer. And he opens his sermon with this statement … “Early man, like everything else, is a created creature.” The rest of his message would be viewed skeptically by atheists, am I right?
Everything he says from that point on, while well-put, is merely conjecture to me. Assuming there is no god, here’s how it could have happened.
1) Man takes charge of his environment
2) Man makes tools
3) Man fasttracks speciation by using tools to creates thing that suit him.
4) “At the end of a happy day toolmaking, he looks around and sees a world that pleases him mightily.” The assumption here is that man created it because he can use tools. But that’s using incomplete logic because, just because man has the ability to use tools, it does not necissarily follow that God did not have a hand in it. In fact, it could mean that God gave him the ability to create tools and intended for him to take charge of his environment and even wanted us to like what we saw! But that doesn’t mean we caused it.
Do yo see what I’m saying? Listening to this as a Christian, I see a million holes in the story. I’m listening to this “sermon” the way atheists would listen to a Christian sermon, and it leaves me with more questions than answers. In fact, it doesn’t even leave me with questions, it just sounds clever but unsubstantiated.
Now, going introspective on myself, I can see how it sounds to atheists when I accept as fact the story of the wharf rats not drowning because of “hope,” and when books like “A Case for Christ” leave, in your eyes, a million unanswered questions.
Now I get what you mean.
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
12 05/29/07 5:11 AM | Comment Link |Mike, to some extent I agree with you. It is annoying when a person begins his talk with an assertion the listener doesn’t agree with. And continues to be annoying if the talk is full of unsubstantiated assertions.
And I think you’re right in likening the way assertions in the audio clip pushed your buttons to the way some atheists have their buttons pushed by assertions in sermons.
I think it’s important to note the genre difference between Douglas Adams and a Christian leader preaching a sermon. Douglas Adams liked to parody things and be provocative. He was a satirist. He said things somewhat tongue-in-cheek. A preacher on the other hand, is absolutely serious and says “this is the Absolute Truth”.
When preachers assert that, in that genre, it’s bound to push atheist buttons. At least with Douglas Adams we can say he was intentionally being provocative and he didn’t just parody religion. He parodied many aspects of human behavior he found irrational and inconsistent.
Dissecting Douglas Adams might be fair but it might also be missing that this could be a deliberate parody of typical sermon style - in which unfounded assertions abound. And if it was then perhaps his goal was precisely what happened in you - he held up a mirror which enabled you to see how annoying it is when Christians do this to atheists.
Or maybe he just liked making assertions he thought were true and didn’t care if it annoyed Christians.
Comment by: Siamang
13 05/29/07 12:41 PM | Comment Link |Here I don’t get the double-standard.
Every sunday, in every church in the world, a person gets up front and says “I know the Creator of the whole universe personally, and He says you should do…. this.”
Then one Towel Day an atheist says “belief is probably a function of our psychology and our natural history”… and THAT’S some wild, crazy, crackpot unsubstantiated claim?
On one hand, human culture developed beliefs to help them understand the world they found themselves in…
And on the other hand, glowing magical beings blowing golden trumpets descended from the sky on wings of silver and told the people what to believe in.
And yet to belivers, the first scenario is unsubstantiated and defies logic. And the second one is undoubtably true and is well-established.
Yes, presuming the second scenario happened, we should discard the first.
In the absense of evidence for the second, I will use parsimony and accept the first. Knowing people and their psychological needs, that seems more plausible to me. At least in the absense of glowing beings blowing trumpets.
Comment by: Mike O
14 05/29/07 1:36 PM | Comment Link |Yes, that’s my point … people on both sides of the argument tend to accept the things they hear that support what they already believe and reject under harsh scrutiny the things that contradict their world view.
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
15 05/30/07 4:12 AM | Comment Link |Siamang - yeah.
I appreciate Mike saying “I get it - this is how atheists feel when they hear sermons.”
I wish more Christians got what Mike now gets. I know some do - but many don’t seem to.
Comment by: PeterTerp
16 12/7/07 7:12 AM | Comment Link |When I read DNA on God, I feel the same way that Adams feels when he hears the comedian asking why airplanes can’t be made of the same stuff as the airplane’s blackbox.
Or I might say that trying to understand a faith in God without having faith in God is rather like Adams’s example of trying to figure out how a cat works by dissecting it…you end up with a non-working cat. If you deconstruct God first to figure out how he functions, you end up with a non-functioning and implausible god.